By Vrinda Singh
In what may look like a silver lining to the struggles of our dear farmers, cloud seeding is essentially a major advantage for the drought affected areas in the country. As they say, rain is the maker and rain is also the breaker, technology has gone far beyond to prevent rain from being a breaker.
Over the years, many techno-efficient measures have been taken and experimented. But the tragedy of our Mother Nature is such, that it dooms over all the creations.
Success story of cloud seeding
Cloud seeding is a kind of climate modification technique to form rain by either using artilleries to fire shells containing rain-inducing chemicals into the cloud cover or by dropping the said chemicals from an aircraft.
However, cloud seeding is a technique which has seen great success stories in the USA, China, Australia, and Philippines. Cloud seeding is being used in China since 1958 to not only alter weather conditions but also clear air pollution. Not only this, few sections of Indian states have also witnessed the success attempts, though much lesser known, recognized and promoted.
Why in India?
Cloud seeding can be essentially adopted because of the major known reason that how India has been struggling to find a way out from drought conditions.
The deal from China was scrapped last year due to the good luck stroke of sufficient rainfall in Maharashtra, where it was prominently going to be implemented because of severe drought conditions.
It is to be noted that Maharashtra is not the ONLY drought-hit area where it should be cared to implement such a method. The year of 2015 and 2016 saw a majority of the states drying and losing hope for rainfall. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, and Karnataka also witnessed extremely dry season throughout.
To be more specific, 266 districts in 11 different states were drought affected in 2015-16.
For 2017 and beyond
Monsoon predictions for 2017 suggest that rainfall will be moderate and not much loss will be suffered. However, considering the climate change that has been witnessed worldwide and the obsolete techniques of weather forecasting that India still relies on, it’s hard to predict the monsoon and put the life of farmers in danger.
Talking about the greener side of the grass, India Meteorological Department (IMD) has said that from 2017onwards it will make state wise monsoon predictions apart from zone wise predictions. Also, 2018 and further, it will include other seasons as well.
The IMD currently gives zone-specific daily monsoon forecast during the season for the northwest, central India, southern peninsula and east and northeast regions. The ministry has launched the National Monsoon Mission with a vision to develop a state-of-the-art dynamic prediction system for monsoon rainfall on different time scales.
Other uses
Cloud-seeding doesn’t just restrict itself to showers of rain, it also contributes to cleansing air of the pollution that the world emits.
Major studies have proved the effectiveness of cloud-seeding in critical times. Further development of this advanced environment-saving technique and majorly its ADOPTION may help save millions of lives. Additionally, in deficit years it can help us in water management of various rivers and their deltas, like Ganga and Cauvery.
The invention holds good for the society only when it is adopted and put to use for social benefit. Therefore, just the experiments and proposals are not going to solve any of the million issues that we face. The government ought to pay attention to the adoption of this technique, with special help from the IMD by predicting the monsoon of each state.
We hope this silver lining shines brighter and give justice to the families of the deceased farmers.
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